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When did health care take a back seat?

This week I was all set to write about Seafest - what an awesome experience it is and how amazing it is that the whole thing is done by hardworking volunteers in our community.

This week I was all set to write about Seafest - what an awesome experience it is and how amazing it is that the whole thing is done by hardworking volunteers in our community.

The awesomeness that is Seafest and the phenomenal work of the volunteers of the Prince Rupert Special Events Society hasn’t changed, and I encourage everyone to check out this weekend’s activities and thank those who host it.

But sometimes people in power do something so blatantly ridiculous that my urge to give them a written tongue-lashing is too powerful to simply push aside. This week’s target: The BC Government as a whole.

Picture, if you will, the uproar and consequences that would come if people anywhere in the Lower Mainland or the Okanagan walked into a hospital and found boxes lining the hallway, were led out back to a portable trailer to view their deceased loved ones in the morgue, were directed to a small shed where their cancer-treating medication was being mixed and physiotherapy patients were directed to an old, rundown house on wooden supports for physio.

You can bet the government would stop at nothing to make things right for those people down south, should they face such a travesty of health care. And yet, since it is actually happening here in the north in Haida Gwaii, the general response from the minister is “we’ll get around to it.”

That response at a time when the government just spent over $500 million to keep soccer and football fans dry with a new roof on BC Place and has committed $410 million to the Evergreen Line to make transportation a bit more convenient for Vancouverites is a slap in the face to the people of Haida Gwaii and doesn’t paint the picture that government cares too much about the region.

Even two per cent of that committed funding would be enough to put an adequate state of the art facility that would meet the needs of a community and area the size of that served by Queen Charlotte. But since there’s not the population there is in Vancouver, the sense of priority seems sorely lacking.

It’s sad when the dryness of sporting fans and the convenience of travel seems to take precedence over adequate care for residents of the province.